E.M. Forster: Centenary Revaluations ed. by Judith Scherer Herz, Robert K. Martin (review)

HUMANITIES 441 how Woolf tended to begin her day by writing in order to find the right rhythm; how scene and image are the integers of her artistic equation; how she gradually diminished the narrator's voice; how she compressed or amplified certain scenes. All these are useful and critically acute signals to help us on our way; but Dick rightly leaves the rest to us. If we wish to pursue it all any farther, we must track it for ourselves through the tangle and rubble of what was left behind, trying to follow the elusive course of the hare who is still a long way ahead of her hounds, the critics. (JOHN W. GRAHAM) Judith Scherer Herz and Robert K. Martin, editors. E.M. Forster: Centenary Revaluations University of Toronto Press, 337. $25.00 The most recent volume in Toronto's Bloomsbury series, this collection contains papers presented at the E.M. Forster Centenary Conference held at Concordia University, Montreal, in May 1979. To this selection a few commissioned essays have been added, notably contributions by P.N. Furbank, G.K. Das, and Ahmed Ali. The eighteen articles, introduced by Judith Scherer Herz, are arranged in three categories: 'Politics and Philosophy,' 'Literary History,' and 'The Novels.' A transcript of a Writers' Panel and Frederick P.W. McDowell's survey of Forster criticism since 1975 close the volume. The 'revaluation' promised in this collection's title is largely confined to the essays discussing Forster as a political and moral force. Wilfred Stone in his provocative 'E.M. Forster's Subversive Individualism' depicts Forster's liberal humanism as evasive and wea~, basing his argument on recent biographical revelations, but reflecting as well a considerable shift in values. One senses, however, some underlying uneasiness about Forster's homosexuality that consequently vitiates some of the essay's effect. P.N. Furbank in 'The Philosophy of E.M. Forster' argues, on the other hand, for the existence of a worked-out set of theories that informed the life and fiction and focuses on The Longest Journey as a philosophical novel. The most convincing and solid contribution to the 'Literary History' section is S.P. Rosenbaum's informed and convincing treatment of Aspects of the Novel as a product of Bloomsbury thought and preoccupations about aesthetics. Rosenbaum traces Forster's ideas to their scattered sources and interestingly considers the work's rhetorical strategies in this major contribution to Forster studies. John Colmer offers a valuable contextual discussion, 'Marriage and Personal Relations in Forster's Fiction ,' tracing the influence of Austen and the Victorian Condition of England novel on the Italian novels and H(JWards End. The least satis- factory essay here is John Beer's 'A Passage to India, the French New Novel and English Romanticism,' a half-hearted attempt at fashionable criticism that mixes the obsessive character of the nouveau roman with Blakean philosophy. Linda Hutcheon focuses on the importance of music in Forster's critical writings and in those of his friends Roger Fry and Charles Mauron, and Robert K. Martin on the relationship between Pater and Forster. The articles in 'The Novels' reaffirm A Passage to India's primacy of place in Forster's canon. Barbara Rosecrance provides a stimulating close reading of the first chapter, relating to the novel's narrative procedures and vision, and Molly B. Tinsley considers syntactical relationships as a means to thematic insights. Vasant A. Shahane's 'Forster's Inner Passage to India' is appreciative rather than critical, and Pakistani novelist Ahmed Ali writes an eloquent tribute to Forster as a friend. G.K. Das, although somewhat overstating the case for Hinduism as an informing mythology and philosophy, valuably draws attention to Forster's reading in Indian texts. The section's major contribution is Philip Gardner's detailed study of the genesis of Maurice. Gardner masterfully pieces together the novel's complex history and is useful for his emphasis on textual criticism, still an almost unexplored territory for Forster studies. Elizabeth Heine's slight and chatty 'Annotating the Imagination' on the editing of A Passage to India is a case in point, and F.P.W. McDowell's characterization of the Abinger Edition as 'definitive' needs considerable...